...............................Taking and Posting Clear Photos...................................It's Really to Your Advantage, So We Can Help You

Taking the Picture

When taking a picture, focus and lighting are very important to the overall quality of your photo. If the entire photo is blurred, it could be that you focused perfectly, but the camera is NOT being held still. So there are two conditions that are required.....focus and holding the camera still. Now there is no arguing with using a Tripod, it's going to give you the best stability.

But if YOU are holding the camera, then be sure to keep your arms in and locked against your side, NOT out to your side like wings. Another option is to rest the camera or your arms on something solid, such as a table.

If the camera is NOT stable, then the picture will NOT be clear.

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Auto-focus is great, but it isn't perfect. Most digital cameras tend to simply focus on what's in the center of the picture. If your main subject is not dead center, point your camera at the subject, half-press the shutter button, re-compose to the desired scene, then finish pressing the shutter button. This will ensure that the main subject is perfectly sharp.

It's also very possible that only a portion of your photo will be in focus. This is called "Depth of Field" (DoF). Your vision has the same problem, it's just that you don't notice it until you shrink the world down to the size of a photo.

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The camera has two ways of getting light into the camera, shutter speed (SS) and the size of the aperture opening (ApO). The faster the shutter speed the less light and therefore you have to make the aperture opening larger to compensate. Well, just like building engines, there is always a tradeoff. With a larger aperture opening, the shorter or smaller the DoF. Most photos taken in a shop for the purposes of documenting your work, will need the largest DoF possible. Just one problem, most shops don't have near enough light to give you both a decent SS and a small ApO for a good DoF.

NOTE: The larger the aperture opening the smaller the F-Stop number.

Well you ask, what about a flash??? Flash is always a possibility, but it also gives harsh shadows sometimes and if you are very close it tends to over expose or wash out the photo. Even when you do use flash, the more ambient lighting you have, the better the photo will be by reducing those harsh shadows.

Typically I use at least one Halogen light and sometimes two in my lighting setup.

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To Summarize- Take picture outside if possible, but not in the direct sun light.- In the garage, always add as much additional light as possible.- Use a tripod if possible.- If you don't have a tripod, then brace yourself, hold your breath momentarily as you push the shutter button. Just like shooting a gun, stability is the key to success.- Take lots and lots of pictures, use different lighting, and different camera angles, with and without flash.

I've taken over 1200 photos for my engine project build thread, but then I deleted more than half of those photos after looking through them to see which ones are useable.

Software

You will want the following features as a minimum; Text Tool, Cropping Tool, Resizing Tool, Drawing Tools and Saving with Variable Quality.

I spent some time looking for FREE software that would do the minimum and had good drawing tools, including lines with arrowheads. PaintNet software fit my requirements very nicely and seems to be made in USA; their mailing address is Kirkland, Washington. If you really like the software, you can send a donation of a few dollars.

With the PaintNet software above you can easily size the photos down to 800 pixels wide for posting on the forum. Most digital cameras take photos at resolution exceeding 1600 pixel wide, which makes for a very large picture that requires paging your browser window to see the whole picture. This makes it not only hard to see the entire picture at once, but it will load much slower. Especially if you have lots of photos on one page. None of the photos in my project build thread are larger than 800 pixels wide.

With PaintNet you can also draw on the photo. Arrows pointing directly at the specific detail you are talking about makes it much clearer to the reader. It might be perfectly clear in your mind, but NOT necessarily to the reader. Text in the photo is also helpful and adds interest to your post.

Another detail to consider is file size and compression. With PaintNet you can set the Quality or compression level such that the photo retains great clarity and will reduce the file size by a factor of 8-10 times, for faster loading. I try to keep the file size under 100 KB by using a Quality setting of 20-30, I never use higher than 40.

To summarize:1. Keep photos 800 pixel wide or less.2. Keep photos 100 KB or less.3. Use a Quality setting of 40 or less.

Posting Photos1.) Click the "Upload Attachment" .2.) Click on the “Browse…” button. 2a.) Click on the "File" to highlight it.2b.) Click the "Open" button. For steps 2a and 2b, see second graphic below.

3.) Click on the “Add the file” button.4.) Click in your post where you want the picture to appear, and then click the " Place Inline" button.5.) Decide you don't want that file, then delete the file here.

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Note 1: If you don't use "Place Inline", the picture will appear at the end of your post.Note 2: Buttons 4 and 5 are NOT available until you have completed step 3.Note 3: By posting the photo using the above technique, instead of using a other photo sharing websites like http://www.photobucket.com and http://www.flickr.com/, the photos will always be available to those using GrumpysPerformance forum.

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